When owner legal issues idled construction of the highly touted “hospital of the future” in Birmingham, Ala., in 2003, Brasfield & Gorrie project director Robert Robison knew it might be some time before work on the half-finished, 13-story, 1 million-sq-ft facility resumed.

Minutes before the Sept. 28 deadline, Veterans Affairs officials partially complied with a congressional subpoena seeking internal documents about cost overruns at the replacement hospital in Aurora, Colo.